Pros and Cons of using RT Target UI

[Adriaan_Carter]

I am considering using either just a monitor connected to the RT to view data in a VI at the RT level or connecting a monitor, mouse and keyboard to view and control a VI at the RT target level. I am considering doing this in part to minimize streaming large quantities of data from the RT to the PC, which is turning into a bit of a bottleneck. I have come up with some pros for doing this, but what are the cons? For similar reasons I am considering connecting an external storage device to the RT to avoid passing data up to the PC just when data collection is intense, then transferring later when the connection is not so busy. What are the pros and cons of this?

Any guidance or pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Adriaan

[ZYOng]

If you have only one RT target, there is not much difference. 

But if you have multiple RT targets, you can send all the data to a single host PC and control all RT targets using the same host PC. By doing so, you only need a host PC and one monitor to communicate with multiple RT targets.

It is always recommended to log the data on the RT target directly (either to the local disk or external drive), so that there will not be any data loss if the network is disconnected for whatever reason.

[Adriaan_Carter]

So one of the cons that I was concerned about was that putting on a keyboard and mouse to the RT and enabling them as instructed in the standard procedure would introduce new interrupts at the RT CPU level, thus making the RT less deterministic. Is that possible?

Cheers,

Adriaan

[crossrulz]

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@Adriaan_Carter wrote:

So one of the cons that I was concerned about was that putting on a keyboard and mouse to the RT and enabling them as instructed in the standard procedure would introduce new interrupts at the RT CPU level, thus making the RT less deterministic. Is that possible?

Cheers,

Adriaan

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I'm not sure the interrupts would be the part making the RT code less deterministic.  What definitely would be causing timing issues is the UI thread using up CPU time.  If you are not using a lot of CPU for your actual RT code, it likely will not be an issue.  I tend to make my cRIOs FPGA heavy with very little in the RT, so I would notice little to no difference to my deterministic code..